Hospital moving offices to dormitory during operating-room expansion

Tuesday

May 20, 2008 at 2:00 AM

By Joshua Balling I&M Managing Editor

The Planning Board on Monday night gave Nantucket Cottage Hospital the go-ahead to move several administrative offices into the first floor of its nurses’ dormitory while the main hospital building is under construction.

The board earlier this year approved an expansion of the hospital’s second-floor operating room and ground-level lobby and reception area.

“The ultimate goal of this plan is to avoid having to bring in any unsightly modular buildings, to find space near the main hospital building where some of those general office functions can move to. We’re not going to modify any of the dorm structure. Those small efficiency apartments on the first floor make great offices, and the building is fire-rated commercially. It is, in a sense, a commercial building,” said Jamie Cook, the hospital’s director of support services.

The nurses’ dormitory sits between the Small Friends early childcare center and the rear of the hospital on its Prospect Street property. Several tenants currently living on the first floor of the nurses’ residence will be relocated to other hospital housing, said Chuck Gifford, the hospital’s director of community relations and development.

Construction is expected to begin shortly.

“While the construction is going on, it will be a major disruption to the hospital. The functions of those offices would be affected,” attorney Arthur Reade said. “At such a time as we would want to return the space to residential use, we would do that. Parking is being provided, and there is no change in the overall activity going on at the site. The hospital is simply moving things around. It’s the appropriate way to handle it.”

The hospital plans to increase from one to two its number of operating suites, and bring them both into compliance with state health codes. To add the extra space, the recessed entrance at the east end of the Prospect Street campus will be enclosed, while at the same time providing a covered patient drop-off area. The addition would create 2,600 square feet of storage and training space in the hospital’s basement, 3,400 square feet of lobby, reception and office space on the ground level, and two operating suites and other clinical spaces in 3,400 square feet on the second floor.

The board voted 4-0, with Sylvia Howard abstaining, to endorse moving the offices, in anticipation of formally approving it at its May 29 meeting.

• Announced that Gary Roy had withdrawn his application to convert the former Pleasant Street post office to a take-out restaurant.

• Voted unanimously to approve the conversion of a Surfside Road duplex into “neighborhood employee housing” for up to 12 workers from the Madaket landfill, pending final review of the management agreement for the 45 Surfside Road property.

• Continued to its June 9 meeting the public hearing on WB Nantucket Holdings’ proposed 66-lot commercial/ industrial subdivision at 3 Arrowhead Drive.

• Continued to May 29 the public hearing on Thomas and Karen Craddock’s proposed three-lot subdivision at 16 Waydale Road.

• Granted Donald and Gertrude Holdgate a one-year extension to Sept. 11, 2009 to complete roadway, utility and other improvements required as a condition of approval for their 10-lot subdivision off 50 Old South Road.

• Unanimously approved a request by Carter Mitchell to enclose an existing staircase at 2 Teasdale Circle to use the space for storage.

• Approved secondary dwellings on the 2 Exeter St. property owned by Tommy Lee Halford and 18 Field Ave. property owned by Roderic Paul Emery; and allowed a second-dwelling request by Maximo Tejada of 42 Macy Lane to be withdrawn without prejudice after learning he planned to build a duplex instead of two separate homes on the property.

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